Political activist and musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (1938-1997) is the central figure in Fela!, the Broadway musical based on Kuti’s Afrobeat music and directed/choreographed by Bill T. Jones, who won a 2007 Tony for his choreography of Spring Awakening. Jones turned to designers he worked with in the past, with sets/costumes by Marina Draghici, lighting by Robert Wierzel, and projections by Peter Nigrini. Sound designer Robert Kaplowitz completed the team.

Fela! takes the audience into the underworld of Nigerian politics and pulsating music at Fela’s famous club in Lagos, The Shrine, which was eventually burned down by the police. The musical was developed in workshops for a successful run Off Broadway at 37 Arts, before settling in at the 1925 Eugene O’Neill Theatre, where the sets extend past the proscenium to envelop the audience in an immersive surround of color, projections, and music.

Setting The Stage
“Fela! tells a story through movement,” says Draghici, who began working on the project during the low-budget workshops. “It’s been quite a journey. I knew Fela’s music but not his story. I did research by looking at documentaries and reading books, and was amazed to find a person so much larger than life.” The question Draghici and Jones confronted, according to Draghici, was “how much of Africa do we put on stage yet not create a museum.” Another requirement was an open stage to accommodate the almost non-stop movement.

At 37 Arts, the architecture required the walls to be covered with treatment to improve the sound, which led to the scenic environment stretching out into the house, a design element retained when the show moved. “The challenge on Broadway is a beautiful turn-of-the-century theatre that is very present,” says Draghici. “How far could we go in transforming it, as every hole you drill needs to be restored?”

Draghici says that, from the beginning, the creative team didn’t want to reproduce anything, but rather absorb the visual information from the films and album covers, “yet create a visual language that is vibrant and contemporary, rather than too 1970s.” As a result, the set includes symbols, masks, newspaper clippings, and portraits of people that Fela admired or based on items from The Shrine or Nigerian religion and art. These objects and images are mounted on a variety of supports that do double-duty as projection surfaces.

“The goal was to create a set with some areas that are less busy yet not use traditional projection screens,” says Draghici. “The back wall has what could be Cy Twombly or Klee line drawings with the flavor of graffiti that can be projected on. We wanted people to walk into the theatre and think, ‘This is different and unusual, and will be enjoyable.’” On stage, Afrobeat musicians from Brooklyn-based collective Antibalas play as the audience enters the theatre, promoting the club environment and adding a sense of anticipation prior to the show.

For the sidewalls, Draghici and Nigrini worked together to select sizes and shapes, with no real delineation between the art and projection surfaces. One example is a portrait of Fela’s mother—a very important figure in his life—whose head moves via projection. “We took a photograph of the actress and printed it on a scrim, and then painted around the edges to make it blend with the set,” Draghici says. “When her face is rear-projected in different positions on the less opaque portion of the scrim, it looks as if it is moving.”

Going Gritty
For lighting designer Wierzel, Fela! represents the culmination of 25 years of collaboration with the choreographer. “He is such an intellectual—well-read and of the world,” says Wierzel of Jones, adding that each piece Jones creates happens over time and often has projected text or written information, making the work more rich and interesting.
In 2007, Jones asked Wierzel to see a workshop for Fela!, at which time the script was being developed around the music and the movement vocabulary. “The music is so sensual, with a political and social sense, and you can’t help moving to it,” says Wierzel, who added the lighting for the final workshops and Off Broadway production and then translated his designs for the Broadway version.

“The job of the designers was to transfer the club feeling from Off Broadway,” says Wierzel. “The challenge with the lighting rig was how to keep it down and dirty, with the sensuality of a gritty 1970s club, in a classical Broadway theatre. We wanted to do it as Fela would have done it, but refined and reinterpreted for Broadway, as well as amped up and extended to what we expect today. We also wanted to pull the energy from the stage out into the house. I think we were successful in keeping the energy and intent in a larger volume. There is still the same grit as well as finesse and flash.”

The lighting gives a brief nod to the kind of look Fela’s club would have had in the 1970s. “We start there and then quickly move on,” says Wierzel, whose design uses pools of light, moving lights, and festoons of colored light bulbs to add to the ambiance. He also had to overcome the challenge that the theatre’s box boom positions are covered with scenery. To add positions for lighting, as well as for sound and projection, a large rectangular truss was added over the house. “You sense it, and it creates a concert feel, but it is not present in your experience of the event,” says Wierzel. There is also a pipe under the balcony, as well as trussing and lights, in keeping with the scenery on the sides of the auditorium, bringing as much lighting into the house as there is on stage.

Hudson Scenic provided scenery, and PRG supplied lighting, including the PRG V676™ console making its Broadway debut. “The undulating rhythms of Fela’s music required complex multipart cues with multiple effects running at the same time,” says Wierzel. “The show is effects-heavy, and throughout tech, we certainly put the V676 effects package through its paces; the console reliably and easily allowed us to work with agility throughout a short tech period.” Timothy Rogers served as automated lighting programmer.

“As I think about the lighting color sense in Fela!, words like gritty, dirty, sensual, sultry, hot, and bold come to mind,” says Wierzel. “I tried to respond to the movement and the music, to find a beauty in the light that was not classically informed. I wanted to be free of any preconceptions and tried to speak from my messy, emotional self, and not always from my thinking, rational self.”

In spite of the 1970s setting, Wierzel uses modern lighting fixtures that have the capacity to change color, refocus to different positions, change intensity, and flash on and off. “This gives me the potential to quickly transform the space and décor,” he says. “In addition, I added color-changing architectural LED fixtures to the orchestra and anteroom walls, thus wrapping the entire room in color. I have supplemented the house lighting with strings of small, clear bulbs reminiscent of a space in transition. Hopefully, it all feels effortless.”

As the audience walks into the theatre, it is entering Fela’s club. “It is smoky, dark, and rich with color and energy,” adds Wierzel. “The senses are gently assaulted with lush imagery. Pools of light slowly pan across the space. You notice interesting banners, hangings, and posters throughout the environment. There is an expectation of something about to happen. The room seems to breathe. What was just a theatre now has transformed into something wonderful and hopefully will be a new, enriching, vivid, and exciting experience for all.”

For Wierzel, the challenge was creating an environment beyond the stage and embracing the entire theatre as a down-and-dirty club. “I hope to create a mood with light that transports us out of present time and space,” he says. “In most clubs or concert halls, there is little separation between the stage and the audience; it all feels like one space. Fela’s club should be a space that is handmade, rough-and-ready in its appearance and feel. However, it should also feel of the moment, of today. To accomplish this, we’re employing a contemporary concert performance-styled lighting vocabulary as a basis for the visual language. This idea will be processed with a nod to the late 1970s, without being subservient to the period, using colorful, kinetic, and dynamic lighting to enhance the music and staging. For me, this means using what our current technology provides and using it, hopefully, with intelligence and purpose.” 

The mix of fixtures in the rig allowed Wierzel to try to find the right light for the idea. “Having the ability to morph color was an important consideration,” he says. “Also finding a fixture that could move quickly was important.” Most of the rig is Philips Vari-Lite equipment—VL3500 Spot and Wash units, VL2500 Wash units, VL2000 Spot units, and VL5s.

Wierzel’s lighting assists in bringing Fela! out into the theatre. “In most shows, the experience one has is directed and focused toward the stage,” he says. “The event does not begin until the house lights go out, and the curtain goes up. In Fela!, the artistic collaborators wanted to go further. We wanted to transform the theatre space into something else—taking this theatre and making it into Fela’s club. We asked ourselves the question, “What would Fela and his people do if they found themselves with this theatre space as the only place for their club?’ I think they would make it their own, with a vengeance, in whatever way they could.”

Next Page: Projecting Fela’s World